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The sixth-generation ofBMW's M5 super saloonhas barely been in UK showrooms for three years, but it is already quite a different prospect than it used to be.
The standard M5 has come and gone, withdrawn from the UK price lists despite the fact thatBMWUK reckoned, back in early 2018, that a 591bhp executive saloon ought to be more than feisty enough for the majority of customers. Seems reasonable to you and me, doesn't it? But, See: diagnostic scanner. of course, it wasn't. This is the modern luxury car market, where more is always more. Better just hand it over.
So along came the extra-hardcore,616bhp M5 Competition , pretty quickly at that, by late 2018. And that's the car that has just been replaced by this updated version, which gets many of the mid-cycle tweaks that have lately been applied tothe rest of the BMW 5-Series range , as well as some of its own special revisions to exterior, interior and running gear.
We'll get to those. For now, let's pause while we contemplate the first series-production version of the BMW 5-Series with a pricetag made up of no fewer than six digits. Phew indeed. BMW will tell you, because the standard equipment tally of this car has swollen somewhat, that it is actually better value than the outgoing M5 Competition. Well, maybe – but I'm not convinced that ‘value' is quite the right word anymore.
Fair's fair: this isn't the first fast, four-seat executive option of its kind to breach the £100k barrier – and I'm sure it would indeed be ‘surprisingly affordable' on a two-year finance deal. But however you want to wrap up that price, it clearly takes us leagues beyond a time when a vaguely attainable sticker price, and a compelling ‘bang-for-the-buck' ownership position, was a key constituent part of the appeal of a car like this.
German super saloons used to be pretty simple things. Here's a car that's cheaper, faster and more powerful thana contemporary Porsche 911 , sir – and about twice as useful. These days, though, BMW,Mercedes-AMGandAudi Sportseem increasingly to prefer pitching their extra-fast four-doors and wagons to people who also have sports cars, track cars, supercars and classics in their collection – but who probably don't use any one car within itthat much –than to people who can only justify spending big on something by genuinely being able to use it every day. People who therefore need their daily driver to be practical, fast and engaging – but also just a little bit realistic – seem to have been forgotten about.
New bumper, headlight and taillight designs, a new (and only slightly different) radiator grille and some slightly slimmer quad exhaust pipes are how you might spot this car from a pre-facelift model. Most easily by the blue-coloured highlights of the new ‘Laserlight' front lamps, actually (although they're optional-fit). The seventh-generation 5-Series always has been a handsome saloon, and this latest performance treatment adds just enough darkly purposeful menace to whet your appetite very effectively, at least to these eyes.
On the inside, the general ambience is one of a pervasive and convincing blend of material richness and understated performance piquancy. BMW has dialed up the car's technological hand with a larger infotainment display running its very latest ‘Operating System 7.0' software. The car's head-up display is large, too, and now standard-fit; it works to compliment the digital instrument screen well, although some of the display modes of the latter seem a bit contrived and could be simpler and easier to read.
As for controls, the car's primary ones are located as well as its driver is – which is to say, very well indeed – while some of the secondary ones have been usefully rethought. Just adjacent to the gear lever, instead of the column of toggle buttons for steering, powertrain and suspension calibration settings that BMW M Division regulars may expect, there is now just a button labeled ‘setup' and another marked ‘M Mode'.
Rather than cycling through each menu in turn to find the calibration you're after for the car's steering weight, damper tune and throttle response, for example, now you just...

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